


Beyond Death

by KingLoptr (Aestridr)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dysfunctional Relationships, Kissing, Last minute feelings, M/M, Ragnarok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 11:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aestridr/pseuds/KingLoptr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is said in the lore that Thor, after battling Jormungandr, will take nine steps and fall dead. Loki will kill, and be killed by, Heimdall. Thor takes those final steps toward his ex-brother/unstable lover so they may have their last moments together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Death

The fires raged hot as the golden city fell. As Asgard burned to the ground, the great World Serpent thrashed about in the flame, angered by Thor’s lightning and spraying a rain of venom from its hissing mouth. Mjolnir fell from Thor’s weakened grasp with a heavy thud, and there would be the beloved weapon's resting place for centuries to come. The thunder god gasped for air, eyes to the heavens as he wavered on his feet. The noise of his beloved city falling filled his ears and the cries of his people drowned the sound of his own heart, straining for each beat. His hand wandered to the fang wound on his side.

The same venom misting the smoke blackened skies now pumped through his veins.

A few yards away, he spotted Loki, just as the chaos god fell. Thor stepped once. Twice toward his brother. Anger. Broiling, seething anger, betrayal, he felt. It burned worse than the venom and sweat streaking the dirt and blood from his skin. And yet, still worse than that was the sting of addictive, relentless love he still felt despite it all. It stung bitterly in his chest and burned at his eyes. His ever persisting affection for Loki mocked him and his foolishness even in his last moments it would seem.

He gasped a breath—inhales grew harsher with each second—and he took a third step in a limp. He wouldn’t make it much farther; His vision blurred but his sights were set as the bringer of Ragnarok writhed on the ground in pain. A few feet away, Heimdall lay as Loki’s killer, already dead himself. Loki coughed blood while his fingers and arms sparked volatile, uncontrolled bursts of ancient and dying magic.

Thor felt an overbearing pity also, now. His mind kept flashing back thousands of years, to happy and serene times in the sunlight, outdoors watching his little brother’s love for his new magic lessons while practicing his spell strengths. Loki’s magic was dear to him. Fused into his genetics now, after so long with it. It was his passion and it flowed through his veins, serving as life-blood just as much as the red fluid. Thor could almost feel Loki’s agony as his magic energy left him for good when he could no longer sustain it. Loki let out a hoarse cry, a sob equal to that of a young boy's, as he curled in on his wound in defeat.

A cutting wind scraped through the battlefield and swept embers and ash across them and the demolished battlefield. Loki continued coughing in the scorched air and Thor felt his own throat drying to the point where it felt like it bled. Thor stumbled four more steps.

“Loki—Loki…” He called hoarsely. He saw Loki roll onto his back at the sound of his name. He turned a cynical and beaten gaze to Thor. He bled from a wound at his stomach and one at his temple, and his dark mess of tangled hair hung in his eyes as his stare met the Thunderer’s.

“I’m—It’s done… _I_ …am done.” Loki called back to him. Thor was almost upon him and took another step, wincing as his chest began to hurt. His heart was not able to take the strain any longer. “Stop it you fool…Wasting your last minutes on me…go die in peace…” Loki groaned, eyes shutting, and he turning his face away.

Thor took the last step of distance, fell to his knees beside his brother and knew he would not rise. Loki spat a curse as Thor curled into a lean over him, and when he finally looked up at Thor the golden god was _smiling_. “Your son. He battles well. He has fulfilled his purpose.” Thor's once robust voice was nearly at a quavering whisper. Loki stared at him with disturbed shock.

“What I’ve done to you—what my children have done, and you _compliment_ —”

“Loki.” Thor interrupted him. He reached out his hand to tangle in Loki’s hair. It took so much effort to do just that, that he knew it would never leave that spot again while he still lived. Loki gave a strangled protestation as Thor eased down, laying himself down over Loki’s torso. “How can you still touch me with tenderness you stupid, stupid creature…” Loki rasped to the sky over Thor's shoulder. “Gone are those days, Thor. Where we’d fight for days only to fall to sentiments and lust somewhere in the woods after. We have wronged each other for too many centuries, too long for this _nonsense_ …” Loki quieted as Thor pushed himself up with his free arm just to look Loki in the face. He was still struggling to breathe, and he dripped blood and tears onto Loki’s dirt smeared cheeks.

“Let me have this last sentiment—Loki—just...let me have—” He stopped there and was able to tighten his grip in Loki’s hair, and pressed his mouth to Loki’s bleeding lips. Loki stiffened as it physically hurt him, but his arms came up around Thor’s waist and he pressed deep into the kiss without thinking. Thor separated with choking sobs when the union lasted until he could not breathe, and Loki stayed frozen and silent, shaking with the pain of both psychological and physical wounds, but too numb to shed any tears. But he did hold on to Thor, a hand caressing the all too familiar expanse of the broad back, lifting the other bloodied hand to stroke at Thor’s hair in return, streaking the flaxen strands in deep crimson.

“It is fine…yes? You can survive this, Loki. Escape far from here…never return to this place and its memory. Please.” Thor was mumbling. Loki recognized it as delirium speaking. He managed a slight smirk from his cracked lips, moved his hand behind to the base of Thor’s neck in mimicry of the same gesture that Thor so loved to use on friends and family.

“Hm. You know I cannot, Thor. And so we end as one, after all.” He kept it inside but even this was a lie, albeit his last. If he stayed still, as he intended to, he would die. If he moved to leave, he would indeed have a slim chance to live. With some damages, both mental and physical, but he could. Yet, he had decided hours ago that he did not wish to leave Asgard even as it crumbled, and he did not wish to leave Thor the moment he saw that Jormungandr would poison him.

He did not wish to leave Thor.  _He did not wish to leave Thor._

Thor lay quietly against Loki and Loki stroked the blood-caked blonde hair, held Thor's head to his chest, and sang whispers of childhood lullabies with what was left of his voice while incinerated debris fell from the sky and the gleaming spires of the palace splintered and collapsed in the distance. The fiery pieces against the darkness comforted him like a home hearth. Thor’s breathing was audibly straining now. Loki bled out from his stomach wound in a puddle growing around them and seeping into the dirt and torn up gravel.

Faded memories returned to the forefront of his mind. Freeze frames of his too long life. The ever constant internal war of both loving and despising Thor so deeply, so fiercely that he went mad some nights. The feeling of intense, sick satisfaction he got when they both fought and fucked alike, Thor being the only one to calm his rampaging insanity. The feeling he adored when he could _hurt_ Thor, make him bleed with both wounds and words, and then moments later be taken, ravaged and wrecked by him in the dirt like a common wench, have Thor buried inside him, filling him so completely, overfull, Thor’s grip seared into his hips like a brand and Thor’s weight bruising his bones. Thor's sharp tugs on his hair, and the sweetly agonizing rolling motion of his hips. Thor's nails digging into his upper thighs, Thor's breath hot on his icy skin.

Thor was always so, so warm over top of him. So warm it was suffocating, debilitating and wonderful. So warm it chased away everything he hated, including the vilification of himself and the abhorrence of his Jotun blood. Many times he remembered consciously attempting to injure Thor bad enough that he would have to stay put for a number of days, and Loki simply would keep him, slowly heal him, just to have Thor and his warmth near for a little while longer before they'd return to their perpetual state of chronic battle. They'd always made a proper time of it, in truce, Thor knowing Loki had done it purposely, but not caring. Even now, Loki desperately wanted Thor's warmth inside him again, to chase the nightmare away just one more time, but they were both too weak for such activity. This couldn’t end like those other times now. Now, they’d fade away empty together, and he would hate himself through it, and it would end. He only had room for one thought suddenly, one word, and the word was ‘finally’.

He stopped singing as Thor shifted again. When Thor moved so Loki could see his face, the color was drained from it. Jormungandr’s venom caused bruise colored shadows under his skin, and purpled around his veins. It was then that the tears came for Loki, even though he’d thought it impossible, but this had broken him. Seeing Thor and his grandeur reduced to this had shattered him.

"What have I done to you?"

He cradled Thor's face in his hands, crushed his lips to Thor’s again. Again. Over and over in staccato. He tasted the venom in Thor’s mouth as it leaking into his own as they kissed—venom on Thor’s breath and venom in Thor’s tongue, and even if he had wanted to escape now, he knew the kisses had literally sealed his fate. Thor’s hold in his hair was weakening.

“No…no, please don’t—please don’t go…” Loki murmured against Thor’s mouth in futile last second desperation. “Thor…” He whimpered, feeling angry and afraid that Thor might leave him first. This one time, Thor was leaving him first, not the other way around. It was cruel. Loki did not want it, but felt he would deserve it. He felt like a petulant child. Thor’s eyes could only open halfway when Loki finally stopped kissing him. Loki’s green eyes searched Thor’s blue ones, admired them—they would serve as his last view of the sky.

“Let me hear you, Loki…one more time--” Thor whispered, breathless, unable to raise his head much and so the tips of their noses touched. Loki knew what he meant without having to ask. He felt the words coming up, and behind them, blood. “I love…and have loved…only you Thor. All of my accursed years…brother…” That last word he had not uttered in a near century, but it left his mouth tonight, as it was Thor’s dying wish. Thor smiled again.

It was still a shining smile, needlessly so through his grief and the muck of their impending demise, and it was Loki’s last sunlight. The blood had followed Loki’s words and bubbled from his lips, trailing down his chin in streams and dripping into his hair. “Ah…I do get to leave first—and I’m sorry Thor. I am so…so sorry to do it—” His final tears fell as he blinked, his breath left him, and his sight faded just as Thor’s smile dimmed.

Thor’s own vision was spotty as Loki’s final breath brushed gentle and chilly against his face. He decided his departing view would be Loki’s green eyes. Void of life as they now were, they were still open, and still that grass green, a green that reminded Thor of all those millennia ago when they’d spend their days running and playing in fields hand in hand as children, bad thoughts far far away and their city’s golden skyline laid before them in the distance, glowing like the future they believed themselves to have.

“I told you back then…that one day you and I would rule Asgard…together. I would be your King and in turn you would be mine,” Thor whispered to his dead little brother with the remainder of his strength. “And I told you last time we fought…that I loved you unto and beyond death." His strength to stay held above Loki left him, and he shut his eyes, then lay with his head in the crook of Loki’s neck. He touched his mouth there on the pale skin in goodbye, took and savored a final inhale of Loki’s scent even through the essence of battle.

“Brother, I have done so. I have loved you beyond death.”

~


End file.
